Founder of Time 2 $ave Shows Busy Woman
How to Save Big
Without Spending Hours a Week Clipping
Coupons
Couponing expert Kasey Knight
Trenum will be the first to tell you that she does not like coupons. But she
does love saving money. Faced with mounting bills after her husband was
downsized five years ago, Trenum
turned to coupons to plug the hole in their savings account. She spent hours
researching how to use coupons effectively and easily reduced her family’s
weekly grocery bill by 75 percent. “I’ve learned how to balance savings
with having a life and without it becoming an obsession,” says Trenum. “I’ve
never woken up singing the praises of a coupon; I’ve just sung the joys of
saving a ton of money.”
·
Where to find coupons for what your family eats
·
How to make the internet do the work for you
·
How to find sale cycles and store match-ups (and
what those terms mean!)
·
How to reinvent your shopping strategy and toss
your lists
·
How to make grocery shopping less stressful - even
fun!
·
How to turn money saved into money
shared
“Available May 2013 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”
Here is my review of this terrific resource:
Paperback; 192 pages
$12.99; May 2013
9780800722067
|
·
Make couponing fit your life not become your
life
“If you’re worried that you aren’t a coupon kind of girl,
don’t,” writes Trenum. “You don’t have to be in love with coupons. You don’t
have to compute math in your head. And you don’t have to set aside hours each
week just to work on your coupons. I can’t stress enough – balance is the key
to making couponing work for you. You have to figure out how to make it fit
into your world; it cannot become your world.”
After shoppers started following Trenum out to
her car to find out how she was getting such good deals, she realized she had a
lifestyle solution she could share. She began teaching couponing workshops. In
2009, she co-founded Time 2 $ave, a frugal and couponing blog, to help others
discover how to make couponing work for them. The silver lining to her savings
from coupons became an empowering focus on giving to others. She has helped thousands improve their lives
and become purposeful givers.
Kasey
Knight Trenum is the cofounder of Time 2 $ave
(www.time2saveworkshops.com), a frugal and couponing blog and conducts Time 2
$ave workshops frequently. Her weekly column can be read in Scripps newspapers
nationwide, her work has been featured in Parade and All
You and she has been interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered and HLN’s Making it in America.
She has a personal passion for seeing women, men and families find financial
freedom, be empowered to improve their lives and become purposeful givers. She
and her husband and children live in Tennessee.
Revell,
a division of Baker Publishing Group,
offers practical books for everyday life. For more information, visit www.RevellBooks.com.
###
Q&A with
Kasey Knight Trenum
Author of Couponing For the Rest of Us
Q.
I’m already busy, and couponing looks like a part time job. Do I really have
time?
A. I hear your pain. If anyone thought she
didn’t have time to coupon, it was me. I didn’t even consider it as a remote
possibility. Time or no time, I couldn’t afford not to use couponing as an
avenue to save. Soon I began to see how the benefits outweighed my investment.
It was worth it to have several hundred dollars a month back in our budget,
especially when our other household expenses weren’t going down. Will couponing
take some of your time? Yes, but not much. I’ll show you the ropes so you can
save both time and money.
Q.
I have a small family. I don’t see how using coupons could help us much since
our grocery bill isn’t that high.
A. The size of your family doesn’t matter.
Whatever your grocery bill is, there is usually room to save. Even if you only
spend $50 a week, wouldn’t you like to cut that down to $20 or $30? Aside from
the numbers, when you shop ahead of time to buy what you use, it takes the
stress of having to go to the grocery store out of your life.
Q.
This seems like a lot of work, and I’m not an organized person. I don’t think I
can keep up with all this!
A. Oh my! If you look up “unorganized” in
the dictionary, you’ll find my picture. I really (really!) want to be
organized, and I have tried to help myself in this area more ways than I can
count. But you know what? I was not created that way. You can imagine my
struggle with organizing my coupons. I had to find a way that worked for me
(and didn’t consume my life), and that I could stick with for the long haul.
Remember, couponing isn’t all-or-nothing. It’s what fits into whatever season
of life you are in right now. What works for one person might not work for
another; we are all unique. Be patient as you figure out what makes sense and
works best for you.
Q.
I’ve seen where couponing revolves around stockpiling and having massive
amounts of food in your house. I don’t think I can (or want) to go there.
A. Fabulous! That makes two of us. My goal
is to teach you how to save your family money and open up doors to give. It’s
all about simplicity here; couponing isn’t an all-or-nothing deal. Couponing
success isn’t measured by the size of your stockpile. I’d much rather be known
for giving.
Q.
I’ve always thought people who use coupons end up purchasing things they don’t
need just because they have a coupon for it.
A. Guilty! I did it. Most people do,
especially in the beginning. However, you’ll soon figure out the items that
your family uses and what items make good donations. Beyond that, I’ll save you
some time here. If you can’t donate it, even if it’s free or cheap, it’s not
worth it. In some states you will still have to pay tax on the full purchase
price before coupons. My mission has been to simplify; if my family doesn’t use
it and I can’t donate it, then it’s just going to take up space in my home. You
can always share your coupons with friends, schools, military programs and so
forth.
Q.
I’ve never been good at math—Can I do this?
A. Don’t worry, I was never good at math
and you don’t have to be either. Besides, who said you can’t use a calculator?
Throw one in your purse or use your smartphone
Q.
How many grocery stores do you shop each week?
A. Lately I am happy to make it to one. I
have been asked this question more times than I can count. It is not necessary
to shop more than one store, or even to shop every single week for that matter.
Whether you save 5 percent or 70 percent, you are still saving. Couponing has
to fit into your life, not become your life.
Here is my review of this terrific resource:
First of all, I would like to extend
a heartfelt “Thank you” to Kasey Knight Trenum and her publisher for sending me a copy
of "Couponing for the Rest of Us" to review for them. I am truly grateful for this
generosity. I really appreciate the time, effort and expense it takes to make a
reviewer copy available to me.
Kasey
Knight Trenum’s “Couponing for the Rest of Us” is a fun and fascinating read. This book has truly changed my home life and
my family. Recently, my youngest
daughter has gotten hooked on the extreme couponing shows and wanted to start
couponing. I explained to her that I had
been a couponer in the past, and that the things you find coupons for aren’t
the sorts of things we use except for toiletries and paper products. So, when I saw the claim of this book to show
you where to get coupons for items you use, I had to check it out for
myself. I also thought this might be a
way to help my daughter get into couponing and exposing her to resources.
What
I didn’t expect was the effect it had on my husband. I barely had time to skim the book before he
snapped it up and started putting its advice to work for us. Now he is visiting websites and getting
coupons and even doing a good amount of our shopping when he gets off
work. We are stocking up on staples and
saving money. We are even picking up
free items that we don’t use with the intention of donating the items.
The
only “issue we’ve come across with this book is that the author’s website
resources aren’t exactly what we expected.
Still, this book is a terrific help for finding offers and discounts.
This
book has been such a blessing! Not only
is it saving my family money. It’s given
my husband a productive task that he enjoys and can do in the middle of the
night when he gets home from work. Thank
you for this much needed reference for my library.
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